Book excerpt: The Poetry of the Word in Psychoanalysis presents selected key papers by leading Spanish psychoanalyst Pere Folch Mateu. The pieces chosen for this book address clinical, psychopathological, technical and theoretical issues approached in Folch Mateu’s unique style, providing an introduction to his impressive output. Folch Mateu integrates a wide range of psychoanalytic sources – Freud, Klein and Bion, and French psychoanalysis – in approaching topics like the psychoanalytic process, obsessive modes of control, the pathology of the negative and intellectual inhibition. The author’s interest in exploring the interactions between the analyst and the patient in minute detail through the course of the psychoanalytic process is a key theme that emerges throughout, as is his devotion to the intersections between music, literature and psychoanalysis. The Poetry of the Word in Psychoanalysis will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in practice and in training, particularly those wishing to explore the boundaries of psychoanalysis and the integration of different psychoanalytic approaches.